![]() However, taken a smidge further, this theory yields the dubious equation “The Cadillac is to the suburban American family of the fifties as khaki jodhpurs and high riding-boots are to the Depression-era rural Kentuckian family”-such logic assumes that Monroe bought into this nouveau-riche malarkey-that he believed his various pieces of clothing and accessories were culturally encoded, readable symbols for the Opry audience. It is plausible that Monroe’s somewhat subversive idea was to set himself apart from the rest of the Opry bunch by going the other direction, away from the more degrading, exploitive, and self-deprecating rural caricatures Hay favored, toward an image we might call Kentucky aristocracy-in this case, wearing your jodhpurs and your riding-boots lets people know you have wherewithal enough for such leisure activities as fox hunting. Uncle Dave Macon became the Dixie Dewdrop. He invented countrified stage personae for his musicians and flamboyant monikers to match-e.g. Hay wanted everyone to look real “country” for the stage show-the more country, the more marketable. Let me say that I don’t want to be the one to speculate on Bill Monroe’s intentions-actually, I tend to think that some of the decisions vis-à-vis Blue Grass Boy dress code and stage presentation were probably heavily influenced at this time by the outside pressure of Opry impresario George D. Now we’re talking 1939 here, the year of the original Blue Grass Boys. Tie, usually diagonally striped, hung no lower than the belly button.Nicely pressed, long-sleeved, button-down shirt, usually white.Black, shiny, riding-boots of half- to whole-calf length.If you go back to the early Monroe stuff, to the early Grand Ole Opry years, or if you go back to the Monroe Brothers, you’ll notice there are five basic elements to the bluegrass costume: The most obvious route and that which yields the good fruit most often is the Monrovian route, which takes us by way of Rosine and the Kentucky hill country where, we must remember, people go fox hunting. It ain’t Elvis Presley dancing around in his skivvies and singing “Nearer My God to Thee.” And it never is. There is first this problem of organization.
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